My painting review of 2014

It looks like I've been a bit more productive this year!

Finished models

Wicked Dolls for Malifaux

Adeptus Arbites Kitbash

20 Guardsmen

Collodi for Malifaux

MkI Thunder Armour

Commissar Lord

Imperial Priest

Leman Russ Tank

Bloodletter

An angry Squat

Codename: Oberon by Mantic

A mildly tipsy Squat

Anvil Industry Werewolf

Bonus: Stuff other people painted for me!

Imperial Beastmen, painted by Simlauren

Imperial Guard Bombard, painted by Golem Painting Studio

How did I do?

Well, that's certainly better than I managed last year. But if you scroll down that post, you'll see I set myself some goals. How well did I do with those?

Not include models I'm selling in my tracking systems next year
Well, that was an easy one.

Take part in the Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge
Well, I took part - but I sort of intended to complete it! I didn't complete the challenge, but I certainly got a lot more models painted as a result.

Finish the blasted Collodi crew
Oh dear. I got halfway there, but there's still four Marionettes to finish basing.

500 point Warriors of Chaos Army
Not started.

All of Salute 2012's purchases painted
Nope. The Storm Troopers were done last year, but there's still a female Commissar, the show Mayan and all the Sarissa Precision stuff that's not finished yet.

No new systems (Infinity, this means you) until I've fully painted one of my other skirmish games up
Abject failure. You'll notice my posts about lovely Infinity stuff, and you will notice above no skirmish games completed...

Future Plans

I think that trying to plan a full year is a mistake. I have projects I want to progress, but I may get distracted by a different project. Y'all understand that, right? So, I'll separate out "what I'm interested in at the moment" and "what I'm committing to".

I've taken to listing my projects on a project page of the blog. It's not fully written out yet - I do it as and when, as I get inspired by different projects. The eternal project of the Imperial Guard is written up, as is the Cypher project.

My big drive at the moment is Infinity - I've found deadlines are good for me getting things done, so being booked onto two Infinity events (one in January, one in February) will help me get my Infinity stuff sorted.

Otherwise, I'd like to get some Guard stuff done, enough Inquisition done to field a small allied contingent, and get some Malifaux in.

Commitments

So, important things with commitments is to be realistic, so lets start by setting some realistic ground rules. Any Kickstarter projects, either arriving or backing, don't count to the wider restrictions, because, well, I just get sad otherwise. Presents (Christmas, Birthday, etc) don't count. Salute most definitely doesn't count.

I have just over 16 years of painting mountain if I keep painting and modelling at the rate I did last year. It'd be probably be better if I got it down to around a decade.

That really means that as a base minimum, I should be finishing two projects a month - 24 a year. That's going to be the basic rule. There's some "stretch goals" to work for too.

- Finish more than two projects in a month, and limit purchases the following month to however much I beat the target by

- Finish "Operation: Complete Other People's Stuff". (only 3 items left!)

- Clear the Hall of Shame of anything started before 2014. (5 items)

- Finish anything I started before the start of 2015. (20 items)

These ones are all aspirational - which means that unlike "finish 2 things in a month", I can aim for them if I'm doing well, but don't feel so bad if I miss them. I'm also very keen to focus a lot of effort on things I've been given as presents, because, you know, it's not cool to have things people gave you sitting in boxes. I don't just want to be resting on my mint plastic/resin/metal treasure like a geek Smaug. It's not comfy, for starters.